Three Great Books #27

A rich jerk at work, layered historical fiction, and one of the best books of the year.

The Fund, by Rob Copeland

I have a weakness for “executives behaving badly” books. And this one, by a New York Times finance reporter, is the Platonic ideal of that literary subgenre. The subject is Ray Dalio, hedge fund manager and author of the bestselling Principles. As described by Copeland, Dalio’s hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, has a corporate culture that skews paranoid and cruel, all in the name of “radical transparency”. Employees are encouraged to rate each other constantly to create a utopian meritocracy (mysteriously, Dalio always ends up with the highest ratings). Conversations are recorded, you are “probed” or put on “trial” if your actions are deemed in conflict with Dalio’s Principles, and said trial is also recorded and sent out to everyone in the firm, sometimes in serialized form with a title like, say, “Eileen Lies”. There’s a lot of ugly crying in front of one’s peers. This book is just a trove of insane anecdotes; one of my favorites involves former employee James B. Comey investigating a conflict involving bagels with his characteristic zeal for law and order. Meantime, the big boss is so Principled that he reportedly sings a truly vile, misogynistic “old maritime song” at an offsite social gathering attended mostly by young female subordinates. I kept thinking, “What a jerk.” And yet, as Dalio likes to tell people, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” so maybe the joke’s on me. (Here is Bridgewater’s response to the book.)

The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng

This gorgeous work of historical fiction made me immediately add the author’s two previous novels to my TBR list. The central story is set in 1921, in Penang, in the Federated Malay States (now Malaysia). The writer W. Somerset Maugham (“Willie” to his friends) has left his wife and child at home in London and has been traveling with his secretary/lover, Gerald. The two need to rest, and they come to stay in Penang at the home of Maugham’s old friend Robert Hamlyn and his wife, Lesley. Both in the novel and in reality, Maugham was known to have taken inspiration for his fiction from actual events and people. So talking to him is a risk, since one’s secrets may end up in a published story. (He’s also, unbeknownst to his hosts, desperate for ideas, having lost his fortune through a bad investment.) Lesley is seething over some discoveries about her husband, and she decides to tell Maugham her story of events that took place in 1910, including a (real-life) scandalous murder trial of a friend, and Lesley’s own love affair. There are a lot of strands to this book, including the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and its charismatic leader, Dr. Sun Yat Sen; the consequences of the criminalization of homosexuality in the UK; the physical and psychic aftershocks of WWI; interracial love, and more. It’s layered and complex and beautifully written, and will have you Googling people and events to see where the historical record ends and Eng’s imagination takes over.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride

When current events seem more horrible than usual, I turn to fiction that makes me feel hopeful. That doesn’t mean that no one suffers, or that bad things don’t happen to good people, but it does mean that the author somehow conveys that I’ll close the book feeling better about humanity than when I opened it. This is one of those books. It’s structured as a mystery — it opens in 1972, with the discovery of an unidentified skeleton — but really it’s the story of the mostly Black and Jewish residents of Chicken Hill, a poor neighborhood in Pottstown, Pa., during the 1920s and 1930s. We meet a lot of characters, including grocery store proprietor Chona; her husband Moshe, who manages the local theater; Nate, a Black man with a mysterious past who works in the theater; and Dodo, a 12-year-old boy who lost his hearing in an accident and whom the state now wants to put away in a grim institution. The community is opposed to that, and through a series of agreements and machinations, they work to save him. Importantly (and realistically), the relationships between the characters don’t lose their complexity and tensions even as people come together in pursuit of a common goal. I finished the last line, grabbed a Kleenex, and resolved to reread this in 2024. No wonder it’s on so many best-of-the-year lists.